Rangers get slugging corner infielder Jake Burger from Marlins for 3 minor leaguers

DALLAS (AP) — The Texas Rangers acquired slugging corner infielder Jake Burger from the Miami Marlins on Wednesday in a trade for three minor league players.

Burger hit .250 with 29 home runs and 76 RBIs in 137 games for the Marlins last season, with 150 strikeouts in 535 at-bats with 31 walks. He started 59 games at third base and made 50 starts at first. Five days of service time short of being eligible for salary arbitration this offseason, he will be eligible next winter and can become a free agent after the 2028 World Series.

Miami got infielders Max Acosta and Echedry Vargas and left-handed pitcher Brayan Mendoza.

The acquisition of Burger comes about a month after the Rangers hired former Marlins manager Skip Schumaker as a senior adviser for baseball operations. Luis Urueta, Miami's bench coach the past two seasons, also was added recently to manager Bruce Bochy's on-field coaching staff for 2025.

Burger was the 11th overall pick out of Missouri State by the Chicago White Sox in the 2017 amateur draft and made his big league debut in 2021. He was dealt to Miami at the trade deadline during the 2023 season, when he hit .250 with 34 homers and 80 RBIs in 141 games.

“He’s an aggressive hitter that makes hard contact, a lot of hard contact,” Bochy said. “We’re excited to have him. He’s going to make us a better offense and help get us back to where we were couple of years ago, and be one of the elite offenses in the game, and he’ll be part of it.”

Burger hit 22 homers from July 1 until the end of last season, the third most in the National League during that span, behind only unanimous NL MVP Shohei Ohtani (28) for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Eugenio Suárez (24) for Arizona.

Texas had a .238 batting average this year while hitting 176 home runs and averaging 4.2 runs a game. Those stats all were down significantly from the World Series championship season in 2023, when the Rangers averaged 5.4 runs a game and hit .263 with 233 homers.

Bochy said Burger could be a designated hitter, play first base and some games at third base.

Rangers primary first baseman Nathaniel Lowe won a Silver Slugger after hitting .302 in 2022, then was a Gold Glove winner that World Series season. He hit .265 with 16 homers and 69 RBIs last season.

Third baseman Josh Jung was voted an All-Star starter as a rookie in 2023 but broke his right wrist when hit by a pitch this past April 1. He was 7 of 17 with two homers, six RBIs and five runs scored in the first four games of the season before the injury and missing 102 games while on the injured list until the end of July. He finished the season batting .264 with seven homers and 16 RBIs in 46 games, but he missed the final week when he went back on the IL for wrist tendinitis.

The 22-year-old Acosta hit .288 in 104 games at Double-A Frisco, starting 65 games at shortstop and 36 at second base this year. Vargas, 19, was the primary shortstop for Class-A Down East, while the 20-year-old Mendoza combined to go 5-4 with a 2.32 ERA and 109 strikeouts in 101 innings for two Class-A teams.

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AP MLB: https://www.apnews.com/hub/MLB

Stephen Hawkins, The Associated Press